The Bad Batch continues to expand its horizons and with the sixth episode, Decommissioned – Clone Force 99 decide to bite the bullet and delve into the mercenary world. With funds an issue, and allies to make, we kick off the episode on Ord Mantell as the team watch Omega practise with her newly found bow from last week’s episode. To say she’s no natural is an understatement – indeed, Cid gives her the best advice as she grabs the bow and pings three shots into the heart of the target, telling Omega she heeds to strengthen her arm, while her clone brothers watch, slightly confused at their sisters lack of skill – but TV shows being what they are, you just know that in a pinch, she’ll come good.
The mission Cid offers, or rather insists, they undertake leads them into the Core Worlds and Corellia, the planet we first saw in Solo: A Star Wars Story (and an assortment of computer games in the ‘90s) on the hunt for a Tactical Droid that Cid requires, but they’re not alone. As they infiltrate the facility, we soon learn there’s another crew after the same droid, and it’s two familiar faces. Rafa and Trace Martez, the sisters we last saw in season seven of The Clone Wars who make a very welcome return to the GFFA as they initially work against the Bad Batch and then as the action intensifies and the peril brews, with them. It’s here that the characters shine.
Wrecker faces his hate of heights, but digs deep to work through it to get the mission done, while Omega continues to blossom as a character, at first fighting against the Martez sisters and then with them as the mission takes second place to survival.
It’s good to see so many remnants of the Clone Wars as we watch the dismantling of the Republic era. The Empire wants all traces of the Republic banished, and so the droid foundries are working at full capacity to smelt down the billions of Battle Droids and Super Battle Droids across the galaxy, and the cosmos-wide event of Order 66 that saw clones turn against Jedi, something the Coruscant based Martez sisters would have seen at close quarters. In addition to the character development we’re watching week by week (anyone else worried when Wrecker loses it and starts following orders once again?), it’s the deeper world-building details that are really satisfying. Next week and episode seven can’t come fast enough, and with the Martez sisters reporting back to a mystery hologram at the end of the show, the intrigue builds.
Read our previous reviews of The Bad Batch here:
